Quite often there's a great deal of disagreement within the executive branch about what we should do. Some cases are pretty straightforward, but a lot of them aren't.

My job was always to pull a vote over from somebody who was likely to be at least at the outset disinclined to agree with me on some things or at least disinclined to agree with the policy that I was defending.

There was a huge movement that led up to [gay marriage legilization], and I played a small role in the great scheme of things. But it was really a privilege to get to do it.

I do a little bit of hand-holding on the big cases. You know, like health care, I'll call over and say, "Don't worry. We've got it under control. We have the best people working on it. We're on schedule. Stay calm." So, those kinds of things.

In the past, presidents had been consulted about those kinds of decisions by SGs, and I thought it was the right thing to do.

Brett Kavanaugh is a brilliant, brilliant judge and one of the most-distinguished conservative jurists in the country.

One thing I've experienced and I feel really grateful for now that I'm on my way out is that I felt that the justices gave that back to me. I really did. You know, of course, you can have some sharp exchanges. That's the nature of the thing, and that's fine. But really in the main I felt like the tone from them was, "Yeah. We may not agree with you, but we're going to have a discussion about this." And it did.